Optical drive not appearing in Opus

On my previous computer, when I inserted a disc in my optical drive, the drive letter appeared in my button which has the following command:

Go DRIVEBUTTONS=cdrom,network,removable,hideempty,multifunctabs NEWTAB=findexisting,tofront

I think inserting a disc also caused the drive to be added to the display of This PC, but I'm not completely certain of that.

I recently got a new computer and now inserting a disc doesn't cause the drive to appear anywhere in Opus.

This is obviously, at least in part, a hardware issue.

The, to me, odd part is that the drive seems to always be part of This PC in Explorer and simply opening Explorer causes the drive to appear in Opus.

While I would prefer the previous behavior, a somewhat reasonable solution is to remove “hideempty” from the drive button. After this, the drive is always shown in the button and clicking there after inserting a disc casuses creation of a new tab with the contents of the disc as well as the drive to be added to This PC if/when it's displayed in another tab.

I can live with this without too much pain, but my question is is there anything I'm overlooking that would restore the behavior to which I've become accustomed.

That happens if the drive itself does not report insert/eject events properly.

Some drives are like that. Updating the firmware may work, but some cannot be fixed. (I have one like this, partly for testing this very issue. Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-219L, although the model is only Pioneer branded and not one of the drives they really made themselves. I once found a page detailing the problem, and mentioning this drive in particular, but I can't find it now.)

If you do something in Explorer that forces it to check the status of the drive, it will notice the actual status does not match what the operating system thought it was, and Explorer itself will generate a broadcast event that updates other applications as to the new status. That's why opening an Explorer window causes the drive to appear in Opus. Since this problem used to be quite common, the OS has some mitigations for it, but they cannot fix the underlying issue that the drive itself doesn't tell the computer when a disc is inserted into it.

In fact, Explorer always shows my optical drive under This PC, even though hide empty drives is turned on. I'm not sure if it has recognised it as a problem model or if Explorer simply always shows empty drives in This PC and that option now only affects the folder tree, but it means going to the This PC folder in Explorer probably triggers the drive to be inspected, as it is shown in the list, and that is probably what triggers Explorer to notice the state was wrong and generate the broadcast event with the new state.

If you go to the This PC folder and push F5 in Opus, I think that should make the drive appear. That is what I normally do with my similar optical drive.

Alternatively, you could remove the hideempty option so the drive is always showing. Or, of course, replace the drive.

The problem could also happen if Opus is running elevated (i.e. the whole dopus.exe was launched elevated, not just individual windows via Admin Mode or normal UAC prompts when doing individual operations). If Opus is elevated but the rest of the desktop is not, then the desktop's notifications about media insertion/removal would be blocked from reaching Opus. But I don't think that is what is happening for you, as it would mean the drive did not appear when you opened the Explorer window. So I suspect it is the drive itself not sending the events, unless something like antivirus is blocking things (always another possibility).

As I said before what seemed strange to me was that Explorer caused the drive to appear in Opus, but you seem to be quite familiar with that.

For whatever it's worth, mine seems to always show in This PC in Explorer also.

I thought I had tried F5 and it didn't do anything, but it does, so I'll use that or remove "hideempty" from the drive button.

(Probably what I get for buying a more or less bottom of the line inexpensive PC).

I don't think it's just about having "inexpensive PC". I still have the Optical Drives not showing in DOPUS on an expensive work computer win10, fast SSD / HDD, External Optical Drives, loads of RAM, nvidia etc. Open up Explorer and all the drives show.
I wonder if making shortcuts of the optical drives and moving them to DOPUS or making them into a button would work?

Do they appear if you tell Opus not to hide empty drives?

The problem in the past has usually been with drives that don't properly report they have had media inserted. It's not limited to any particular price range of hardware AFAIK; I had a Pioneer branded drive once that was like that (and well documented as having the problem, it turned out).

It can also happen if you run the whole Opus process elevated (rather than elevate individual windows), which can block the media insert/eject notifications from arriving (there's a FAQ about that if it's relevant).

Yes I noticed that in the post, but not very tech savvy
, so I will need to read the FAQ you mentioned. DOPUS is awesome, and I even got the portable version so I don't have to suffer on someone else's "Personal" computer. to get around. The thing is, DOPUS HAS at times seen the drives when plugged in (both via USB) So I know it can work.

Did you check that Preferences / Folders / Virtual Folders / Show empty disk drives is turned on?